by Paul Theroux
I sat on the upper verandah of the Hastings and wrote the beginnings of what I imagined might be a novella, something I'd call "A Dead Hand." I needed to fictionalize, to give myself latitude to invent. The title was one that it seemed had been chosen for me, because, unable to write, I'd felt I had a dead hand. And the moment an actual dead hand had come into my possession, I recaptured my ability to write. I was now awakened, in the live hands of Mrs. Unger. I kept her name for my main character because I didn't intend to take any liberties with her.
In the first pages I wrote about receiving the old-fashioned letter, about meeting Mrs. Unger at the Oberoi Grand, the invitation to the Lodge in Alipore, and the experience in her vault, her healing hands. The very word "vault" was evocative to me and represented the passion and secrecy of our meetings. She had admitted me to her vault in every sense.
I was privileged to write about that rarest of beings, a thoroughly good person who had found a way of using her fortune to improve people's lives. She didn't preach, she hadn't founded an order of nuns, she wasn't a celebrity—she avoided all publicity. She was practically unknown. I freely surrendered to her; I wanted to belong to her. As a result, I had a character; I even had a narrative. She had healed me too. The sight of the child whores, the tribals on the back street in Nagapatti, was something I would never forget. Analyzing my feelings, I began to see that, though I was horrified by the small girls' selling themselves, I was also fascinated and aroused to think that, for a pittance, I could have had any of them. And that unworthy feeling helped me distinguish between the expression of mindless lust and the elevating desire I now knew. I would not have experienced any of this except for the intervention of Mrs. Unger.
Almost as satisfying as her good works was her beauty. At first, I had seen her as rather severe, almost forbidding, holding court, a little too majestic with Charlie and Rajat on either side of her. But time softened that image and deepened my understanding. She had clear skin with a rosy blush on it, and her hair, drawn back Indian-style, gave her an impressive forehead above her piercing eyes. The Calcutta heat kept moisture on her glowing face, and the tropical sunlight emphasized the sculpted planes and angles of her skull. Her nose was sharp, like an instrument of inquiry; her lips were full and soft. She was slightly bucktoothed, and her side teeth were prominent, so her lips were usually parted, making her expression more sexual, somewhat hungrier. Her breasts were lifted against her billowing shawl and loose sari, her nipples like subtle pegs against the silk. I loved her slender feet, with a stippled floral pattern that might have been painted or tattooed.
Even wearing sandals she was almost as tall as me. She walked purposefully and yet upright, with grace, like a dancer, but a tall one, singular and strong. Parvati would have seemed like a schoolgirl next to her. Mrs. Unger had a way of holding her left wrist with her right hand, turning the bangles and the gold cuff with her fingers as she spoke, as though the jewelry were an outward symbol of her power or a badge of her authority. She wore an anklet, a gold chain; she had gold rings on some of her fingers, and a nose jewel, a ring with a pea-sized diamond at her right nostril. Yet these jewels were warm, the gold like flesh.
She was perfumed, trailing a sweetness that was so enticing I wanted to taste her, to lick her shoulders, to eat her—and she must have known that, because she had allowed it, had urged me to go deeper, to penetrate her not with my wand of light (her expression) but by insinuating myself inside her. Yet to think that this woman was so lovely within, had such a good heart, a great soul—this was all the inspiration I needed to write. In the days after our return from Assam, in the steamier premonsoon heat, I was reborn as a writer.
In this unlikely place for a rebirth, the shaded upper verandah of the Hotel Hastings, above the thickened dust of its lane off Sudder Street, I was given new life. I was happy. I was grateful too. I had thought my creative life was over; I was ashamed to be pretending that I was a writer. That thought must have kept me traveling: I didn't want to stay anywhere long enough for someone to see how little I wrote, how futile I felt. "I've got to be in Bangkok," or "I'm going to Vietnam in a few days," or "I have an assignment"—the restless movement, a pretense of being busy, kept everyone from seeing that I had nothing to write, that travel was my habit of evasion, and like all habits a dreary repetition, a folding and refolding of feeling, a diminishment. All habits are tinged with sadness, for being habits.
Everything had changed. I loved writing about Mrs. Unger. I enjoyed recapturing the pleasure of being with her. I described her lips, the hair that straggled on the nape of her neck and was always the same, uncombable, the fingers that had touched me, the skeletal angles of her jaw and the glow around her eyes. Re-creating her, I was aroused, and the form my arousal took was a visceral happiness.
As an outsider, the traveling writer sees only surfaces. I was a recommender of hotels, a sampler of meals, a tester of comforts. I had described disturbance before, and the derangement of the world, the appearances of places I'd skimmed across. But I had never known a whole worthy person; I had always doubted that such a person existed. Everyone I knew was just getting by. They were like me, tenuously attached to chaotic societies, but we were parasites, living life outside, in bars, in hotel lobbies, hiding in big cities or at the edges of villages, at the beach, on the verandah with our feet up, calling for another drink, more peanuts. Lives with no further purpose than survival and sex. So that was my subject. I had no idea where I was going and neither did my friends. Writing about these uncertain people was a way of writing about myself.
Now I had Mrs. Unger—her energy, her certainty and sensuality, her sense of direction, her self-esteem. Unlike the other Americans I knew, she never dramatized her being in India. I had never met anyone with that amount of restraint. She didn't boast about her charity; she was generous without being conspicuous. She was content. Writing about her lifted my spirits. I was back in the world again. I had a wonderful reason for staying on in Calcutta—no need to slip away. I was at last proud of what I was doing, writing a true account of a meditation on virtue.
Through the dead hand, as if this withered yellow thing had pointed the way, I had discovered something new and unanticipated. I wrote fifty or sixty pages. No one had ever written about anyone like her. She was not a sentimental do-gooder wishing herself on the poor, or helping old people to die, praising their suffering and their poverty, but rather a glamorous woman quietly improving the lives of lost children.
Howard called: "You still here?" Parvati called: "What are you up to?" I didn't say. "A Dead Hand" was my secret. And I had much more to write—I hadn't written about Theroux's intrusion, the train trip, "I'm black," Assam, Nagapatti. All that lay ahead, so much experience to draw upon. I was absorbed in this long story, and I saw that, though happiness was the rarest of subjects, happiness had liberated me. I thought of nothing else but doing full justice to Mrs. Unger and my luck in having opened the wrong door and met her.
I was so concentrated in this work that I forgot everything else. I made no plans. I saw Mrs. Unger a few times, always quietly, always in the incense-filled vault of the Lodge. She massaged me with the tantric pressure of prolonged and unexpected touching, adoration of the fingertips—and all of it these days was a further lesson in how I was to touch her. The best of tantra, taking turns.
And, after such caresses, I always went back to my work refreshed.
This was about two weeks of sustained creativity, the happiest period of my writing life I had ever known. And it ended as suddenly as it began.
"Packet for you, sir," Ramesh Datta, the desk clerk, said one day as I went down to lunch after a morning's work, just as many weeks before he had said, "Letter for you, sir."
He said it casually, and because of that I didn't take it seriously. Something from Parvati was what I thought, with a kind of irritation—a very good poem. I'd have to read it and respond.
But it wasn't that at all. It was something else entirely, and it reminded m
e of everything I'd forgotten.
Part III
13
MY NAME WAS NOWHERE on the little parcel, which was square, too large to fit into my pocket, and thick, yet light, taped on two sides. It was about the size of a sandwich and just as soft. Indian paper is fragile—the wrapper was already bruised and torn at one corner. No stamp, only HOTEL HASTINGS in blue ballpoint in block letters, and slightly grubby, as though someone had carried it by hand. I imagined a boy clutching it in sweaty fingers. Tell them it's for the ferringhi.
I was reminded of Mrs. Unger's letter, the fat envelope that had started me down this road. Had it not been for that letter, I'd be far from Calcutta now. A letter without a stamp seemed to me portentous. I could not imagine what was in this parcel, but I knew it mattered.
"Who brought this?"
"Runner, sir. Small boy."
I did not want to seem too inquisitive. I suspected it was something to be kept secret. I didn't want anyone to know about my private life, my passionate attachment to Mrs. Unger, my resumption of writing. At that point, with the unopened parcel on the lunch table beside my plate, I still believed that my writing life had been revived, that Mrs. Unger was a goddess who had restored my creative vitality.
Although I longed to open the thing, I resisted, fearing witnesses. What if it was bad news? Its unusual size and shape somewhat alarmed me. I was afraid it might contain another melancholy body part, something small and withered. I finished my lunch, pretending to be casual, then I shoved my chair back, stepped outside onto the verandah, and glancing behind me, seeing no one, picked it open.
As the brittle paper wrapper disintegrated in my hand, I held its contents, a square of carpet. It was like a swatch, a store sample, but roughly cut, velvety with a floral design and part of a margin on one side, tightly woven and dusty on the underside. No other obvious markings, though the pattern on the upper side was distinct: green strands, yellow petals, on a deep red background. It had been coarsely scissored, like a bite out of a big rug.
No message. I sat staring at it. My first thought was to search for bloodstains or any identifying marks. I found nothing; even the pattern was unrevealing, not to say banal. But as an unexpected chunk of material, it was so odd as to seem meaningful—that is, a deliberate riddle. I could not at first imagine who'd sent it, but I related it to what I'd been told by Mina at the cemetery: Carpet was parceled. Body was inside.
I sat back and sighed. This was like blunt trauma, a colossal interruption of my writing. My work lay on the table. I knew that I could not return to it until I had solved the problem.
That was the strangest thing of all. During the trip to Assam and in writing about Mrs. Unger, I hadn't thought about Rajat and the hotel, the discovery of the corpse, his running away, and how from the very beginning I'd been asked by Mrs. Unger to solve this mystery and vindicate Rajat. So overwhelmed had I been by her that I'd neglected to follow up on the information I'd found: the rudeness of the Ananda's manager, the details that Mina Jagtap had given me.
How did this parcel find me? The thought fluttered through my mind. But it was naïve of me to wonder. Calcutta was a city almost without tourists. I had been here more than two months, walking the streets and openly asking questions. Though there must have been many foreigners in the city, it sometimes seemed that I was one of about a dozen resident ferringhis. I was easy to spot. That explained how the parcel found me, but not why.
I immediately suspected Mina. Who else? She knew I was inquiring, she'd been fired from the Ananda, so she had a reason to help me. No note: the swatch was self-explanatory—cut from a carpet, probably the one that had held the body.
Wanting to please Mrs. Unger, to remind her that I was still pursuing the problem she had posed to me, I called her cell phone, an emergency number she'd given me. "Emphasis on 'emergency.'" I got one of those messages: The mobile customer is either currently out of service or out of range.
I wanted to show her that I was on the scent. I got into a taxi, with the square of carpet in my briefcase, and went to the Lodge in Alipore. I had never dared to go uninvited before, but today I had an excuse—this ambiguous clue. I could prove that I was busy on her behalf, and grateful to her.
Writers talk to themselves, and traveling writers talk to themselves constantly. People on their way to a meeting prepare their lines. I began to rehearse a little speech in my head.
"See what I've done?" I would say. "You asked me to investigate the bizarre event at the Ananda, and I've obeyed you. I have a few leads. The dead boy was brought to the hotel in a carpet, and I have a piece of that carpet, sent anonymously to me at my hotel, probably by someone who wants me to know the truth. I think it might be a former employee. I've got it right here."
The gate to the courtyard was padlocked, and the courtyard itself was empty. I called out to the chowkidar, who stood in the shade holding his badge of authority, a long thick club.
"Namashkar."
He pretended not to hear, but I kept calling and embarrassed him into coming over.
"Please let me in."
"Cannot." He looked solemn and stubborn but confident, happy to be unhelpful.
"I have to see Ma." Everyone knew her by that name.
"Not available." He smacked the club against his palm, as if to remind me that he was in charge. The club was dark from being handled.
I felt awkward talking to him through the iron bars of the gate, especially here, where I'd always been welcome. I could hear the children screeching inside, some of them singing.
"I'll write Ma a note. You can give the note to her."
I imagined writing I must see you at once. She would forgive me for intruding. I was making progress in solving the mystery. I had a dead hand, I had a piece of carpet, I had a witness.
As I began to scribble my appeal on a page of my pocket notebook, the chowkidar said, "Not here."
"Not in the Lodge?"
"Not in Calcutta."
"Where is she?"
He gestured past the wall with his big club. "Gone to U.P."
You-bee was what he said. I knew he meant Uttar Pradesh.
"Where in U.P.?"
"Pactory. Meerjapur."
"Out of town," "on a buying trip," "away for a bit," "picking up some children," she always said to explain her absences. She never told me where. This was more specific, a factory in Mirzapur. I was not sure where Mirzapur was, but I knew it was not near Calcutta.
In the taxi on the way back to the Hastings, I asked the driver where it was.
"Varanasi side," he said.
"Far?"
"Five hundred twenty kilometers."
"How long to drive?"
"Not drive. Train better. Fourteen hours."
I considered going there so that I could say, "Look what I've got!" But I thought better of it. It would be ridiculous and premature to show up with the dead hand and the piece of carpet. I needed more evidence. I wanted to amaze her, to show her that I cared. I hoped that she'd be pleased, that she'd reward me. I longed to see her smile at me, to touch me with her secret blessing.
At some yellow hour of the Calcutta night, sleepless in the light pollution of street lamps, alone with this problem, I thought: It must have been Mina who sent it. But had she gotten this fragment of carpet from the hotel itself? She wanted to help without being directly implicated. I needed to spend a night at the Ananda.
I hated the sight of the hotel. I associated it with death and deceit. I disliked the manager, Biswas, for his rudeness, for being unhelpful. And he had abused Mina. He'd fired her for showing me the register. And in this hot weather there was no more uncomfortable part of Calcutta than high-density New Market—the milling crowds, the stink and noise of traffic, the litter in the streets. Here were the cheapest hotels, with pompous names: the Savoy, the Ritz, the Astoria, New India, Delight, Krishna Chambers, and among them the Ananda.
Seeing me approach with an overnight bag, the girl sitting just inside the door ra
ised her head and called to someone.
Mr. Biswas loomed behind her, materializing out of the hot shadows, wrapped in the puffy gauze of his dhoti, wearing a khadi vest. I had forgotten how hairy his ears were, how yellow his fingernails, how red his teeth, how sour his expression.
He must have warned the girl to look out for me. It didn't matter. He knew me only as a nuisance. He wasn't seriously threatened; he was annoyed because I hadn't rented a room.
"Remember me?"
"How could I forget you, sir," he said, swelling a little with belligerence.
"I need a room."
"As you wish." He said something to the girl in Bengali, and hearing him, she reached for my bag.
I clung to it. It was ridiculously light—suspiciously so. "Never mind."
"We are here to serve you," Mr. Biswas said. Every word he spoke sounded either sarcastic or insincere.
"A single room. What are your rates?"
"Standard is four hundred. Facing street. Deluxe is more. Surcharge for garden view. Supplement applies to suite."
Mina had told me that Rajat had stayed in number fifteen. I asked for that room.
"Garden view. Six hundred rupees. Payable in advance."
That was about sixteen dollars. I handed over the rupees. Mr. Biswas licked his thumb and counted them, then gave them to the girl. He was eyeing me sideways, working a wad of betel nut in his mouth. He spat a gob of reddened saliva at the side of the doorway, a fresh streak among dried-out drips.
"Passport," he said, and beckoned with his skinny fingers.
We were still standing on the top step of the Ananda. I slipped my passport out of my pocket, held it away from him, and said, "I want it back."
"After transfer of details, full name and visa number."
